Suchergebnisse

Aus dem Vorwort: Diese Briefe des jungen Bremer Kaufmannes Martin Hermann Gildemeister schildern das tägliche Leben und die wirtschaftlichen und politischen Verhältnisse Japans, das sich nach mehr als 200 Jahren der Abgeschlossenheit wieder dem Ausland öffnete. Gildemeister machte sich als Teilhaber der Firma Kniffler (später Illies & Co.) und als preußischer Konsul um den Aufbau des deutsch-japanischen Handels verdient. Er brachte dem ersten japanischen Germanisten Shiba Ryokai Deutsch bei und beeinflußte den Philosophen Fukusawa Yukichi.

In Japan, department stores and public markets grew rapidly from the early twentieth century, and these had significant impacts on both consumers and traditional retailers. Despite pressures from the large-scale retailers, however, traditional, small-scale retailers stubbornly survived. As a result, the Japanese retail system in the pre-war period was characterized as 'the dual structure'. In addition, the government played a critical role in Japan's retail development. These features can be accounted for as reflections of the unique modernization process of the country.

This dissertation is a critical history of Buddhist thought in Japan from 1868 to 1931. During this time, many intellectuals became fascinated with the Buddhism of Japan's medieval period. Some saw it as a form of religious experience that could overcome the modern problem of alienated existence. Others declared that the cultural history of medieval Japanese Buddhism held the essence of Japanese cultural authenticity. These philosophical and historical interpretations of Buddhism together constituted a modern cultural discourse that I call Japanese Medievalism: a romantic vision of medieval Japan as a world of Buddhist spirituality. This dissertation traces the evolution of Japanese Medievalism, reconstructs its main arguments, and examines its ideological significance as a cultural artifact of modern Japan. Japanese Medievalism had an ambiguous ideological function. On the one hand, it was a religious revolt against the ideology of the ruling class - the ideology of the kami (the "native gods" of Japan), which renounced Buddhism as a foreign superstition inimical to national progress. Japanese Medievalism was an attempt to reassert the meaningfulness of Buddhism in defiance of state ideology. But on the other hand, Japanese Medievalism also supported the political order. By evoking a cultural realm of religious experience, Japanese Medievalism diverted attention from the concrete problems of industrial capitalism and anti-democratic politics in Japan. In sum, Japanese Medievalism was a Japanese analog to Existentialism in the West - a spiritual alternative to Marxism's materialist critique of modern society that ultimately had politically conservative consequences.